


Every Voice You Have Ever Heard Inside Your Head

by Saentorine



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidents, Childhood Trauma, Driving, Family Issues, Father-Son Relationship, Flying, Force Sensitivity, Force Use, Gen, Kylo Ren Backstory, Manipulation, Married Couple, Millennium Falcon - Freeform, Mother-Son Relationship, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Seduction to the Dark Side, The Force, Trauma, Trust Issues, Young Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22442296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saentorine/pseuds/Saentorine
Summary: In the midst of a near-deadly accident, Ben Solo learns to trust the voice inside his head.
Relationships: Ben Solo & Han Solo, Leia Organa & Ben Solo, Sheev Palpatine & Ben Solo, Snoke & Ben Solo
Kudos: 33





	Every Voice You Have Ever Heard Inside Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this way the heck back right after _The Force Awakens_ first came out and now that the trilogy’s over I figured I should finally finish and post it :P Thanks to several scenes of Baby Yoda messing around with the Force and the Mandalorian’s ship for reminding me that this WIP existed . . . 
> 
> Updated to include more recent additions to canon, including references to _Last Shot_ and obviously _The Rise of Skywalker_.

_"And Han Solo-- you feel like he's the father you never had. He would have disappointed you."_ -The Force Awakens

_"I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head."_ -The Rise of Skywalker

***

_Something is coming._

Ben Solo woke up with a gasp, immediately sitting upright and knocking the blanket to the floor. The voice had torn him from deep sleep but lingered in his head, separate from his dreams. His mother had told him the Force sometimes manifested itself as a voice; surely that was the explanation, since he couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t been hearing it. 

The _something_ turned out to be nothing of concern: a familiar tattoo of knocks on the entry port to the Falcon, Han indicating that he had returned and that Ben needn’t be alarmed. Any attempt at entry that wasn’t preceded by this and Ben knew he was to shut himself in the secret compartments under the floor.

“How was your afternoon?” Han asked as he entered, pocketing the credits he had received for his job. 

“Fine,” Ben yawned, dropping from the bunk and retrieving his blanket. “Kind of boring.”

“I’m sure,” he replied with knowing smirk, as if he didn’t actually believe Ben had indeed spent the afternoon safely on board the ship bored out of his skull trying to figure out how to play dejarik with just one person-- as if he _hoped_ his son would get himself into the kind of scrape that would push them both into the adventure he was longing for.

Despite the long, lonely waits while his father made negotiations with his clients, Ben liked being brought along on Han’s shipping expeditions rather than left at home with Elsie the droid. His parents tried to keep their arguments out of earshot, but Ben knew that some his father’s missions weren’t entirely “legitimate,” as Leia called it-- glimpses of a life he had led long ago before Ben was born. But Han was happiest when he was flying the Falcon on grand adventures and Ben liked being around him like that.

Of course, Ben liked best when all three of them traveled together, a family rarely united and focused on one another. Leia provided counterpoint to some of Han’s more boneheaded ideas and Han was much more likely to follow intergalactic regulations with a princess and senator in the copilot’s chair. But Leia’s work did not allow for frequent travel for leisure.

However, when Leia wasn’t on board, Ben got to sit in the pilot’s chair on Han’s lap. 

He was supposed to sit in the chair behind the captain’s, strapped in to the regulation galactic travel child safety harness Leia had installed in the seat behind the pilot’s chair, but Han had never been diligent about safety protocol so long as Leia wasn’t on board to remind him. Leia insisted their son would have plenty of time to sit up front and learn through Han’s coaching when he was old enough, but Han said it was never too early to start getting the gist of it. Besides, with Chewbacca back on Kashyyyk he was a bit lonely without a copilot.

Ben settled on top of his father’s thighs as Han began the ship’s engagement and liftoff sequences. He talked his way through them for his son’s benefit, but they were so instinctive to him by now there were things he didn’t even think to say. Ben merely watched, hoping to absorb it visually. All the jargon, all the names for the various buttons and mechanisms of the dashboard fell right out of his head as soon as they were careening past stars at breakneck speed anyway.

They were free of the planet’s atmosphere in the blink of an eye, and then Han invited Ben to take the controls. “Knock yourself out, kid,” he encouraged him. Ben couldn’t see his face behind him, but he could hear the smile in his voice. He placed his hands on either side of the steering yoke as Han placed his own gently on top.

Ben took a deep breath. Passively watching out the window was one thing, but the minute he knew _he_ was in control and had to concentrate, something changed. The field of stars beyond seemed to flow into the ship, into _him_ , as if he were immersed in the wash of a river that was the universe. The effect was both overwhelming yet oddly soothing, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to feel the entire universe within himself deeper than the superficial senses.

His vision doubled: one image superimposed over another, just slightly out of time. The lagging timeline was the present, what he was perceiving in real time, while faster stream was apparently prescient, giving him insight into what he would see an instant before he actually saw it. It was as if his mind-- or the universe itself?-- was trying to do him a favor, giving him a glimpse of what was to come in time to make the best judgement, but instead the effect was dizzying and confusing.

Trying to shut out the double dose of stimulation, Ben closed his eyes.

His mind swept clean of the extra visuals, he could see clearly, but a moment early: the immediate future laid before him as clear as the holovids Elsie would put on to entertain him. Anticipating the necessary deceleration once they breached the gravity of the planet and fell on course, he deftly lifted a hand to ease back on the throttle. Han’s hand rested gently on top of his, affirming his move. “That’s it,” his father assured him. “You got it.”

Ben smiled to himself, amused that Han hadn’t noticed that he was driving with his eyes closed.

***

The journey home continued without event until Ben’s stomach started rumbling. He asked if he could check the provisions on board. 

Han’s mouth twisted. All of the plans he had as a newlywed for exploring the galaxy with Leia had never materialized. His trips these days were short and he did not keep the galley well stocked.

“Tell you what,” he suggested, “I know a shortcut that’ll get us home at least an hour faster.”

Ben nodded slowly, trying not to show reservation; he knew by now his father’s shortcuts did not always save as much time as they cost in danger-- but Han had already made up his mind. He took over the steering yoke and the Falcon veered off in the new adventurous direction.

“You ready?” 

Ben didn’t say anything or even nod, and indeed it made no difference; Han immediately engaged the leap into hyperspace.

The stars elongated and their route through hyperspace took shape as a whirling tunnel. Ben’s stomach initially rebelled at the sudden velocity, but he steadied himself as they lurched inexorably towards Han’s programmed target.

Time worked differently in hyperspace, but it seemed like only moments had passed before several of the Falcon’s emergency lights flashed and sirens blared. Shadows flickered around them and the ship began to lurch, the tunnel around them growing unstable. 

“What the—” sputtered Han as he disengaged the hyperdrive and started double-checking the coordinates. 

Ben was still watching out the window as the Falcon slowed and leapt back into realspace, where they were surrounded by debris. Asteroids the size of the ship itself hung in peripheral view, whipping about at random as their own gravitational forces acted upon one another.

“Blast,” swore Han. “There wasn’t supposed to be anything on this route.”

“We can go the regular way,” Ben suggested immediately. “I’m not _that_ hungry.”

Maybe it would have been better if he had just kept his mouth shut and let Han talk himself out of it. Maybe he sounded too much like his mother all the times Han had proved her wrong before. But Ben’s nervous suggestion-- and the doubt it implied-- only hardened Han’s resolve.

“No, we can make it,” Han insisted. “This isn’t bad. I’ve flown through worse plenty of times. We’ll jump to hyperspace again on the other side.”

Han’s arm was still around him so Ben stayed put, though now it felt less like a place of honor than a trap. His nose was only inches from the window. 

Han slowed the Falcon’s speed but only minutes later, something hit the ship. It was only a minuscule asteroid, but it hit the window and ricocheted off with a crack like a gunshot. Ben couldn’t help it; he yelped and stiffened. Han’s arm tightened around him while he kept steering with his free hand.

More debris began raining on the Falcon like hailstones. In lieu of anything else Ben held on to Han’s arm, knowing his fingernails digging into his father’s skin were probably painful but unable to loosen his grasp. One of the larger asteroids swooped in from below and Han narrowly evaded it with a sudden yaw.

Han couldn’t take his eyes from the skies, but finally removed his arm from around his son to take the throttle while he steered with his other hand. Without a properly trained copilot, he needed everything at his own disposal. He pushed gently against Ben’s back to prod him off his lap. “Go strap yourself in, kid, this is gonna get a little rough.”

If Han Solo was taking the danger seriously, it was serious. Ben’s heart fluttered with adrenaline as the Falcon lurched while he walked the short distance to the seat behind Han, causing him to practically fall into it. His hands trembled as he did up the harness.

However, even immobile within the 5-point harness, he hardly felt safer. His throat tightened as Han did up his own seatbelt; he’d never seen _that_ happen. And not only had Han begun to make far more dramatic evasive maneuvers, the Falcon whirling and tipping in directions that would knock anyone unsecured against a wall, but the _feeling_ was back again, assaulting Ben with double vision of the present and the near-future a half-second ahead. Asteroids flew at him in his mind and appeared in view of the window an instant later, just as he was sensing the next approaching set. Han managed to dodge everything in time, but Ben was painfully aware he could only respond to what he could see. The window was only a narrow snapshot of the entire sky; he could not see in all dimensions at once. It seemed to be by sheer dumb luck alone that he managed to evade as much as he did.

Han seldom let Ben handle any control without his hand on top of his, but when he did he often simulated the necessary motions in the air before him as if he still had his own invisible controls in hand. Focused on the control yoke where his hand had been only moments before, Ben reached out and pretended to grasp it, as if he might will Han to steer the way he foresaw.

The ship lurched as Han made a sudden turn, and a jolt of fear shot through him—but he swore he felt the yoke shudder in response to his intent, as if it were under his fingertips.

_Starboard_ , he concentrated.

His breathing shallowed and quickened as his throat tightened in terror. Adrenaline surged through his veins liking a numbing drug, loosening his sense over his own body, as if the Force had taken control of him rather than the other way around.

_Go starboard_.

The yoke shuddered again and with a final burst of will, he thrust it starboard . . . 

. . . just as Han grabbed it and wrenched it to the left.

Both of their maneuvers cancelled each other out and bow took the full impact of the asteroid head on, sending her spiraling into a furious spin. Lights went out in the cabin while dashboard indicators flashed angry red and yellow. Something aft was leaking smoke with a sinister hiss. The ship’s artificial gravity could no longer compensate for the g-force of the tight roll and the air around them seemed to grow thin.

Han’s terror exploded into Ben's consciousness. He could feel his father scrambling for concentration, strategy, sheer dumb luck as his field of vision narrowed. Han panicked as his limbs weakened, blood pulling from his extremities. His hand fell away from the throttle and he slumped over in his seat, unconscious.

Ben’s own vision greyed as his body pressed painfully against his seat in the centrifuge that the ship had become. There was an inexplicable hissing in his ears and a hard pit of nausea in his stomach, and yet his mind hung precariously between present and future, reeling desperately for an ounce of control again. 

His brain burst with scrambled thoughts: his mother, Leia, terrified of his terror and assuring him desperately to be calm; his uncle Luke’s voice echoing in his head. _You have far more power than you even realize_ , more awed than Ben himself when he had immediately read the strength of his connection to the Force.

But whatever power he had didn’t matter now. He was going to die, rent apart by whiplash or suffocated or crushed by an impact with the ship, his body to be lost somewhere in the bowels of space, never to be found. He was going to die, and he was _terrified_.

Cutting through all this chaos, like a was the _voice_ again: _Use your fear._

His heart thudded so hard in his throat he was speechless, but he didn't need to put into words that he was too terrified even to use his terror.

_It has to be you. Can_ he _help you?_ the voice insisted, apparently referring to Han, whose limp arms floated helplessly in the volatile gravity of the spinning ship.

In sheer desperation, Ben lifted his hand and reached out through the Force for the throttle. 

_Use. Your. Fear._

He gasped when he seized upon the joystick with his mind, then pushed as hard as he could. 

The ship flew straight out of its death spiral, still careening forward at precarious speed. However, with the gravitational force regulated back in the cabin, Han revived and it took only a second for him to seize the yoke and throttle, slow them down and resume the last evasive tactics through the asteroids on the outskirts of the field.

As the ship straightened out and gravity settled again in the cabin, the nausea of all of the spinning finally caught up with Ben. The whirled contents of his belly spun upward and out, spattering down his front, but he was too utterly exhausted to address it. He was barely aware of Han turning to see what was the matter before his vision blurred at the edges and finally cut out.

***

He was on Han’s lap again when he woke. They were still in flight, but gazing sleepily out the window Ben could see they were nearly home, the planet growing larger in the window. Once clear of the asteroids Han must have cleaned him up and brought back up with him to keep him nearby-- either for Ben’s assurance or his own. Ben remained collapsed against him, uncaring in his exhaustion to help with the landing procedures or even watch the beautiful descent back through the atmosphere.

Leia was waiting at the hangar. She dashed forward as the airlock opened, looking just as frazzled as the rest of her family. " _What happened_?" she asked, terrified and furious as her eyes scanned over them both. She had felt the bursts of Ben’s terrified consciousness as vividly as Ben had.

Ben had been able to walk off the ship himself, though Han kept a steady hand on his shoulder as if afraid he might collapse at any minute. “We’re all right,” he said in placation, doing his best to sound as if it were true. “We--,” he knew there was no sense in denying it at this point, “we had a little accident, but everything’s fine now.”

Leia made a strange noise in her throat as she scanned over the ship behind them, the places of crushed and folded chassis where the asteroid had struck.

“Engine’s fine, airlock fine, on-board atmospheric conditions re-stablized,” Han quickly ran down the stats he had been able to assess on board. “It’s just superficial damage to the frame, and some re-entry heat absorption tiles need replacing . . . “

“What happened?” Leia repeated.

"I was maneuvering around some asteroids,” Han rushed through that detail in hopes Leia might not note it, “and it was the craziest thing; I go to swerve to avoid one of them, but the damn mechanism sticks on me, like some outside force was pushing it back the other way--"

Leia realized it on _force_ ; Han realized it when he saw her face and immediately stopped speaking. Both of them turned their gaze on Ben in dawning awe laced with horror.

“Ben, did you try to steer the Falcon?” Leia asked.

“I didn’t touch anything,” he insisted. Han had made it painstakingly clear that he was never to touch anything on the ship’s dashboard without his explicit guidance and supervision. 

“That’s not what I asked.”

Both of his parents looked at him a particular way when they knew-- or thought they knew-- something about him he hadn’t said, but when Leia looked at him like that, she really and truly _knew_.

“I just . . . _thought_ about it,” he explained, trying to put the impossible into words. “There was an asteroid coming . . . and we had to get out of the way . . . so I _thought_ about steering right and it . . . worked.” He swallowed. “Almost.”

“You let the Force help you move it,” Leia concluded. She was calm, but Han was silently apoplectic in the background. 

“I put it back,” Ben insisted, mostly for Han’s benefit. “Dad fainted and couldn’t drive the ship, so I . . . moved the controls again so we stopped spinning.”

This time it was Leia who careened through an array of emotions in several seconds, understanding just how dire the accident had been-- and just how tragic it _could_ have been. It was her own fear spilling into his own that sparked memory of those terrified moments locked in the spin on the Falcon and finally pushed him to tears. His throat choked and he could no longer speak.

“Ben, it’s all right,” Leia assured him, pulled him into her arms and trying to calm him. “Shh . . . "

However, he could see in Han’s face behind her that _he_ was not alright.

Leia turned to him, hissing quietly to him as if Ben might not hear her—though of course he could. “ _You cannot be mad at him_.”

“I’m not mad at him,” replied Han. “But I feel like I should have known I had a passenger who could override the ship’s entire navigation system.”

“It’s not like you haven’t before.”

“Luke didn’t touch a thing on the ship without me knowing about it.”

“You know Ben didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Are you sure? I don’t know if it scares me more to think he _did_ or he _didn’t_. Either way, he wasn’t _telling_ me what he was doing. We would have been fine if he hadn’t--"

“He was trying to keep both of you safe,” Leia interrupted, a touch of defensive anger in her voice.

“And I wasn’t? You don’t think I wasn’t doing my damndest to--"

“If he was scared enough to call on the Force to intervene?” Her eyes narrowed. “An _asteroid field_ , Han? With your son on board? Is your life so _boring_ now that you have to play dice with your own child’s safety?”

“At least I spend time with him at all, instead of just outsourcing him to whatever droid is most convenient!”

If Leia was thunderstuck, Ben had gotten the lightning. There was nothing lazy or shameful in busy, working parents employing nanny droids, as Leia’s own parents had-- but they had already found Elsie bugged once, and when Ben had been left in the care of the kitchen droid it had almost terminated him. Ben could barely remember it, only the reverberating terror of a serrated blade arm inches from his neck before the hijacked droid reverted as if nothing had happened, but the danger and distrust it had seeded had not diminished. He pulled away from Leia, clamped hands over his ears and squinted his eyes shut, feeling as if he might burst with the trauma of his memory now pooling and reacting with the horror of the accident he had just experienced.

Something on the Falcon blew like a small eruption and Han’s head whipped towards it. “Go see what that’s all about,” Leia told him bitterly, dismissing his attention to the ship so that she could comfort her son herself.

However, Ben had already stormed away, sprinting as far as he could from both his parents, to where he could be out of earshot of arguments and attempts to comfort him that were really just attempts to console _themselves_.

Yet in the quiet, he nevertheless felt a presence lingering by him. It didn’t say anything at first-- just waited, like a holo before it began to speak.

_They couldn’t protect you,_ the voice finally observed, calm and sympathetic yet slightly provocative. _You were the one to protect yourself._

_And you,_ he thought. _You helped. Whatever you are._

_I told you something was coming,_ the voice reminded him.


End file.
